emotional structure, the transformational character arc, and developmental edits

Monday, May 20, 2013

Thoughts from down in the trenches

Working on cleaning out my Practical Emotional Structure workshop (getting ready to retire it) and had to write some extra bits to tighten it up. Feeling kind of weird going against the whole, "If your character is always reacting to story events, you need to make them more active" mandate. But my thoughts? There
is no such thing as a non-reactionary character. Everyone reacts. People don’t
just—out of the blue—do something totally random that isn’t connected to
something else, at some level, even if it’s buried in subconscious motivation.

2 comments:

I can see both sides of that argument. I suspect the key is in the definitions behind the thoughts of the person saying "reactive" and "proactive" -- I mean, yes, everyone is reactive, but some are much more proactive in their reactions. =) For example, pulling out your gun and shooting the charging tiger is much more proactive than curling into a ball and wailing at the top of your lungs.

lol, true. I see it as just a reaction to your character-building though. You can be created more proactively, or created to curl into a ball. It all goes back to the kind of depth you want (which goes to show you I'm winding myself in knots trying to see all sides including the underneath and top, doing this thing, lol. One day though, the first book in the damned tome will be ready. Maybe soon. I dunno.)